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Do free work – For a career you’ll love!

Charlie has clearly articulated a powerful approach to creating a career you can love. It’s an approach that we have used successfully as well.

Our Story at Matchbox Group:

In mid-2009, when work slowed down dramatically, I did the same thing. We had all this free time on our hand so we decided to go out and do what we loved for free until people could pay us. We realized that the best thing for creating paying work, is when people have experienced good work of ours.

The ways that have worked for us:

We identified our “ideal client” and our “ideal gig”.

We began to speak about these favorite topics to groups of people that contained our ideal clients (CEO’s, human resource professionals, and other leaders).

Even more radically, we became very flexible with our price structures if an ideal client fit the following criteria:

Their mission is one we are passionate about

We like them as people and working with them was enjoyable

We have the time to do it

The easiest thing is to do whatever it takes to make our consulting programs work for the client. That often means going way above and beyond what we’d expected to see happen. Adding value in many unexpected ways as we go along. The wonderful thing is that this is a far more delightful way to work as well. Plus, the testimonials clients did for us went from very good to outstanding.

We produce free videos for our ideal clients. I’m a bit of a video production geek anyway, so it was an easy next step. We started asking if we can video-record portions of our programs. We created videos they could use to communicate changes to their far-flung employees and other stakeholders.

We even create videos and lead events far after we are officially done with a gig.

The benefits

No surprise, their gratitude helps us network and build a reputation much faster.

We’re doing more and more of the work we love to do.

We’re partnering more and more with clients we like and respect and who like and respect us.

I’ve always enjoyed my career, but now I love it more than ever.

We keep honing our skills at what we most want to master.

We feel engaged and alive, even when the money isn’t so strong. It keeps morale up.

Am 67 and have begun to do unpaid “positive thinking” workshops for the homeless, recovery and felon populations in Florida. I agree with your idea of giving it away to build credibility.
I, too, feel I have a message to give to Corporate America, fosteringf individual responsibility to be the best person they can be for all employees of a Corporation, and welcome your insights on how to move forward in this arena.

I like what you’re doing, Tom.
I’ve been using a process for helping organizations and people discover their
“Best DNA”.
(see our website for a dynamic video of helping a nonprofit do this).
We also use individual activities for discovering core purpose and core values personally. I’d like to experiment with use our spherical feedback process to use others input to blend and discover personal Best DNA. I’ll write more later if you’d like.